Development of a Smart Profiling Sensor for Stingless Bee Honey Species in Malaysia

The local stingless bee honey in Malaysia is highly valued because of its significant nutritional and natural remedy. Two commonly found stingless-bee species in Malaysia are Heterogona itama and Geniotrigona thoracica. Currently, the lack of standard profile data for the pure stingless bee honey from these two species leads to challenges in evaluating the authenticity of the stingless bee honey. To address this gap and provide a reliable solution, the objective of this research work is to develop a smart profiling system that can characterize stingless bee honey. This research work presents an innovative 3-in-1 smart profiler for characterizing pH, moisture content and colour intensity for different concentrations of stingless-bee honey. The developed profiler can characterize the stingless bee honey profile in situ without tediously bringing the samples to the laboratory. The 3-in-1 smart profiler utilized an Arduino Uno microcontroller, a TCS3200 colour sensor, an E-201-C pH sensor and an HD-38 moisture sensor. The research methodology involves designing the simulation environment using Tinkercad software, developing a hardware prototype, system testing, sensor calibration and performing comprehensive analysis. The developed profiler has successfully characterized pH level, moisture content and colour intensity for 100% pure honey, 75%, 50%, 25%, and 12% stingless bee honey with the repeatability of the output trend. For Heterogona itama species, the measured acidity level, moisture content and RGB colour intensity for 100% pure honey are in the range of 2.76-2.77, 82-84 % and 973-976-726 respectively. On the other hand, 100% pure honey from Geniotrigona thoracica species has 2.4-2.42 pH level, 86-89 % moisture content and RGB values of 970-963-707. This smart profiling system has the potential to be a part of the profiler in creating a standard profile for stingless bee honey for itama and thoracica. This research work has advantages in terms of in-situ detection, affordable to own and simple operating sensing system. It has the potential to be marketed and promote local socio-economic development. In the future, the accuracy of the results obtained from the prototype will be compared to sophisticated equipment such as gas chromatography.